Amit Varma is a writer based in Mumbai. He worked in journalism for over a decade, and won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007. His bestselling novel, My Friend Sancho, was published in 2009. He is best known for his blog, India Uncut. These days, he makes his living playing poker as he works on his second novel.

My Friend Sancho

My first book, My Friend Sancho, was published in May 2009, and went on to become the biggest selling debut novel released that year in India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and had earlier been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.

This is the 34th installment of my fortnightly poker column in the Economic Times, Range Rover. I discovered poker as…

23 October, 2008

The Man Asian Shortlist…

... has been announced. Your favourite blogger hasn’t made it there. My congratulations to the writers who did—I’m happy for them and look forward to reading their books, but if I ever find one of them walking in front of me on a promenade, and I happen to have a poison-tipped umbrella available, I don’t promise inaction.

Excerpts of most of the longlisted works are available here, and you can check out the first chapter of “My Friend, Sancho” if you feel like. I haven’t yet decided which publisher to go with—I have generous offers from three of them—but the book should be on the stands by the middle of next year.

This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?